Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to surgical clip appliers. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to reposable endoscopic surgical clip appliers.
Description of Related Art
Clip appliers are used in surgical procedures to apply a surgical clip to a blood vessel or another duct to prevent the flow of body fluids therethrough. Clip appliers are used during a variety of surgical procedures, some of which include, open surgery, endoscopic procedures, and robotically controlled procedures. Clip appliers that apply multiple clips generally provide a plurality of surgical clips stored in a clip cartridge mounted at the distal end of the clip applier. The clips from the clip cartridge are fed sequentially to jaws defined by a jaw blade at the distal end of the instrument upon actuation of handles at the proximal end of the instrument. As the handles are closed, the jaws close to deform a surgical clip positioned between the jaws, and as the jaws are opened to release the deformed surgical clip, a new surgical clip is fed from the clip cartridge to a position between the jaws. This process is repeated until all the surgical clips in the clip cartridge have been applied. A new clip cartridge can then be positioned on the clip applier.
Some clip appliers include complicated internal structure(s) that prevent effective re-sterilization and are therefore single use, disposable instruments. Reposable clip appliers are instruments having a body that can be re-sterilized and re-used a number of times. It would be desirable to provide improved clip cartridge and jaw blade components for a reposable surgical clip applier to facilitate simple and easy disassembly and re-assembly of the instrument during sterilization.